


MockingJay Ending

by phoenix_risen



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Bromance, Gen, Only if you squint - Freeform, slight peeta/gale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:11:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenix_risen/pseuds/phoenix_risen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A re-write of Mockingjay's ending. Peeta's point of view journaling to Katniss. Suggested Peeta/Gale bromance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	MockingJay Ending

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a Dystopian Fiction Hunger games Contest, and i won a Kindle fire! I hope you like this!

There are no words to describe how much I miss you. The fact that you died haunts me, even after 7 years. I still have this awful feeling of guilt that nags at the back of my mind, telling me I could have helped, changed the outcome of all this, even if I know that’s stupid and delusional. But the trial shouldn’t have taken that long. So freaking long! That’s why she was able to get all of those pills. You hoarded them until you got enough to die from; took them all at once, to numb the pain of living with these scars, to rob the capitol and everyone else of the privilege of killing you. But I still think that The Mockingjay shouldn’t have died in such a pathetic fashion. You should have gone down, if at all, fighting for your freedoms and beliefs. In a way, you were, though, weren’t you? But so quietly, instead of in a flash of fire. That’s how you should have died, life burning up like the inferno everyone knew you as. The girl on fire. My girl on fire…

So much has happened in these long years, but let’s start at the beginning. Soon after you died, they dissolved the districts. At the celebration, they declared you a martyr and designated a holiday to celebrate you and everyone else that died in that god awful war. You’re a tale told to the young ones, the girl who saved us all from oppression, the reason they don’t need to worry about being sent away. I didn’t go, though. I was… well I… I am so ashamed to admit it, but in those first months, I let myself fall deep into the bottom of a bottle. The drunken haze dulled the pain, and I could easily see why Haymitch had used this method of “self-medication” to forget about all the horrible things he’d done and seen in the games. It was... effective, but I knew that you would be so angry at me if you saw what I had been reduced to, a blithering drunkard. At one point, I even attempted suicide to join you. I took so many pills, swilling down the alcohol with each one. 58, to be exact, enough to dull the heartache, and everything else. Haymitch found me just in time to save my life. In the hospital, when I finally woke up, Gale was there. He and I never got along, and when he said “You really think she would approve of you doing that?” it set me off so bad, I tried to attack him. But it was nice to feel something other than sadness. But yes, that first year was the hardest.

The ironic thing is that Gale was the one who helped me finally claw my way out of that state of despair. He had me move in with him, and started me on the long road of recovery. I started baking again in my free time. Then, finally, the first good news came to me since what seemed like forever. Haymitch asked me to make him a cake, and when I ask what for, he told me he and Effie were getting married. Can you believe it? To think they hated each other when they met! But I was happy to. Their wedding was beautiful. It was the first time I’d ever seen Effie out of her wig. Her hair is auburn, and when I complemented her on it, she laughed and said she would have preferred to wear one of her wigs. You would have loved all of it. I know I did. Gale sat next to me and we were both in the wedding party. I was the best man, and he, a groomsman. The thing is he asked me to stay living with him. I was going to go live on my own, but the look he gave me… I found out later that he relied on me as much as I relied on him, if not more, for emotional support. I agreed to stay, and he looked so relieved, it almost made me want to hug him. Almost. But I’ve since let him fill the void you left. He’s the only one I can feel that way about without feeling extremely guilty, like I’m betraying you. It’s not love, at least not romantic love. More like a deep caring for him. I think it’s because we are the two you loved the most, who loved you most, that we understand each others pain the best. That’s why, when the despair is threatening to engulf the both of us, we lean on each other for support. Sometimes it feels like I need him more to get up in the morning than my prosthetic leg. 

At the beginning of the 4th year after your death, Gale and I decided to move to what used to be District 11. We live upstairs, and I started my bakery in the lower level. It’s called Mockingjay Baked Goods, and 2 to 3 times a week I take bread to the children who live in the area and we feed the mockingjays. Once and a while, when Gale is actually at the house, he sings the song you used to sing, the one about the meadow, under the willow. He has a nice voice, though it is a little rough in places. He uses it to sing to Kathleen, Haymitch and Effie’s daughter. She was actually born that year, and is 3 now. She’s adorable, and I have the privilege of calling her my goddaughter. I like to think that if you had lived, you would have been her godmother, but maybe that’s hoping for too much. Haymitch often jokes that I’m actually more like her godmother, seeing as she calls Gale her “gaw-dada”. But I’m not offended. I’m just glad that she can live safely, in a world where she can easily travel to see us from another “district”. So if she thinks of me as her godmother, that’s fine. It feels so nice to be loved.

The next three years were uneventful, but tomorrow is the holiday for you. Gale and I are going to visit the memorial, and then your grave. He’s telling me to ‘shut of the lamp’ and ‘stop writing, it’s late and we need to go to bed’, But I have a few more things to say. The first is that we will always remember you, seeing your face in the stars and hear your voice in the whispers of the grass as the wind blows through it. The second is that I owe you so much, and I constantly want to see you, but I think you’ll be okay if I wait a bit, right? I’ll live my life to the fullest, and then live another one with you in the after life. And the third and final thing. I will never stop missing you. None of us will. I have discovered in these last 7 years that if you never forget someone, they’re never truly gone and are with you always, in your heart and in your mind. But, there is only one thing left to ask. I love you, real or not real?

 

Real.


End file.
